Mark Twain, a Biography. Complete eBook

She had lost something, too; she had outstripped her
traditions. One day, when she and her sister
had walked across the fields, and had stopped to rest
in a little grove by a pretty pond, she confessed,
timidly enough and not without sorrow, how she had
drifted away from her orthodox views. She had
ceased to believe, she said, in the orthodox Bible
God, who exercised a personal supervision over every
human soul. The hordes of people she had seen
in many lands, the philosophies she had listened to
from her husband and those wise ones about him, the
life away from the restricted round of home, all had
contributed to this change. Her God had become
a larger God; the greater mind which exerts its care
of the individual through immutable laws of time and
change and environment—­the Supreme Good
which comprehends the individual flower, dumb creature,
or human being only as a unit in the larger scheme
of life and love. Her sister was not shocked
or grieved; she too had grown with the years, and
though perhaps less positively directed, had by a path
of her own reached a wider prospect of conclusions.
It was a sweet day there in the little grove by the
water, and would linger in the memory of both so long
as life lasted. Certainly it was the larger faith;
though the moment must always come when the narrower,
nearer, more humanly protecting arm of orthodoxy lends
closer comfort. Long afterward, in the years
that followed the sorrow of heavy bereavement, Clemens
once said to his wife, “Livy, if it comforts
you to lean on the Christian faith do so,” and
she answered, “I can’t, Youth. I haven’t
any.”

And the thought that he had destroyed her illusion,
without affording a compensating solace, was one that
would come back to him, now and then, all his days.

CXXIII

THE GRANT SPEECH OF 1879

If the lunar rainbow had any fortuitous significance,
perhaps we may find it in the two speeches which Mark
Twain made in November and December of that year.
The first of these was delivered at Chicago, on the
occasion of the reception of General Grant by the
Army of the Tennessee, on the evening of November
73, 1879. Grant had just returned from his splendid
tour of the world. His progress from San Francisco
eastward had been such an ovation as is only accorded
to sovereignty. Clemens received an invitation
to the reunion, but, dreading the long railway journey,
was at first moved to decline. He prepared a
letter in which he made “business” his
excuse, and expressed his regret that he would not
be present to see and hear the veterans of the Army
of the Tennessee at the moment when their old commander
entered the room and rose in his place to speak.

“Besides,” he said, “I wanted to
see the General again anyway and renew the acquaintance.
He would remember me, because I was the person who
did not ask him for an office.”

He did not send the letter. Reconsidering, it
seemed to him that there was something strikingly
picturesque in the idea of a Confederate soldier who
had been chased for a fortnight in the rain through
Ralls and Monroe counties, Missouri, now being invited
to come and give welcome home to his old imaginary
pursuer. It was in the nature of an imperative
command, which he could not refuse to obey.